Intel CEO Paul Otellini to retire in May

Intel said Monday that president and CEO, Paul Otellini, has elected to retire as an officer and director of the company effective next May.

Otellini?s retirement caps a career of nearly 40 years of continuous service to Intel and its stockholders. His distinguished tenure includes eight years as CEO, during which he is credited with managing the company through challenging times and market transitions. In a statement Monday, Otellini said he plans to remain an advisor to the company's management following his retirement.

"I?ve been privileged to lead one of the world?s greatest companies," Otellini said. "After almost four decades with the company and eight years as CEO, it?s time to move on and transfer Intel?s helm to a new generation of leadership."

Over the next six month, Otellini will work with Intel's chairman Andy Bryant and senior management on a leadership transition that will include a CEO search conducted by the company's board of directors. Intel says it plans the consider both internal and external candidates for the chip maker's top seat.

In addition, Intel also announced Monday that the board has approved the promotion of three senior leaders to the position of executive vice president: Renee James, head of Intel?s software business; Brian Krzanich, chief operating officer and head of worldwide manufacturing; and Stacy Smith, chief financial officer and director of corporate strategy.

While presiding as CEO from the end of 2005 through the end of 2011, Otellini helped grow Intel's annual revenue from $38.8 billion to $54 billion, and generated cash from operations in excess of $100 billion.

Shortly after assuming to leadership role at Intel, Otellini teamed with late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to help shift the Mac away from PowerPC processors and towards Intel's -- a transition that helped fuel Apple's resurgence in the PC market. He's also credited with transforming Intle's operations and the cost structure for long-term growth, as well as achieving breakthrough innovations like High-K/Metal gate, 3-D Tri-gate transistors, and dramatic improvement in energy efficiency of Intel processors.

Wondering if there could be any chance of a come back from Pat Gelsinger.

Paul Otellini has actually brought x86 to Apple Desktop.

I think one of the important thing Apple sticks to ARM is more about control then saving money. No longer would a change of leadership in Intel has any effect on Apple's major business which is the mobile devices.

I think one of the important thing Apple sticks to ARM is more about control then saving money.

According to the Otellini in Isaacsons' bio, it was partially about the high price which let Apple to not use an Intel processor in the iPad:

"Since the Macintosh computers were now using Intel chips, Jobs initially planned to use in the iPad the low-voltage Atom chip that Intel was developing. Paul Otellini, Intel’s CEO, was pushing hard to work together on a design, and Jobs’s inclination was to trust him. His company was making the fastest processors in the world. But Intel was used to making processors for machines that plugged into a wall, not ones that had to preserve battery life. So Tony Fadell argued strongly for something based on the ARM architecture, which was simpler and used less power. Apple had been an early partner with ARM, and chips using its architecture were in the original iPhone. Fadell gathered support from other engineers and proved that it was possible to confront Jobs and turn him around. “Wrong, wrong, wrong!” Fadell shouted at one meeting when Jobs insisted it was best to trust Intel to make a good mobile chip. Fadell even put his Apple badge on the table, threatening to resign.
Eventually Jobs relented. “I hear you,” he said. “I’m not going to go against my best guys.” In fact he went to the other extreme. Apple licensed the ARM architecture, but it also bought a 150-person microprocessor design firm in Palo Alto, called P.A. Semi, and had it create a custom system-on-a-chip, called the A4, which was based on the ARM architecture and manufactured in South Korea by Samsung. As Jobs recalled:
At the high-performance end, Intel is the best. They build the fastest chip, if you don’t care about power and cost. But they build just the processor on one chip, so it takes a lot of other parts. Our A4 has the processor and the graphics, mobile operating system, and memory control all in the chip. We tried to help Intel, but they don’t listen much. We’ve been telling them for years that their graphics suck. Every quarter we schedule a meeting with me and our top three guys and Paul Otellini. At the beginning, we were doing wonderful things together. They wanted this big joint project to do chips for future iPhones. There were two reasons we didn’t go with them. One was that they are just really slow. They’re like a steamship, not very flexible. We’re used to going pretty fast. Second is that we just didn’t want to teach them everything, which they could go and sell to our competitors.

According to Otellini, it would have made sense for the iPad to use Intel chips. The problem, he said, was that Apple and Intel couldn’t agree on price. Also, they disagreed on who would control the design. It was another example of Jobs’s desire, indeed compulsion, to control every aspect of a product, from the silicon to the flesh."

Hey Forstall, here's a job opening for you. They could use someone young who has an intimate knowledge of how computer software works and direct the hardware to suit. If that means fabricating ARM chips, make it happen.

Originally Posted by PhilBoogieAlso, they disagreed on who would control the design. It was another example of Jobs’s desire, indeed compulsion, to control every aspect of a product, from the silicon to the flesh."

Judging by how well Apple has engineered AX performance, while reducing power consumption, while keeping heat production to a minimum, I'd say Steve was right. Meanwhile, Microsoft is struggling with the Surface for Windows 8 Pro, with its red-hot Intel CPU that requires a fan and "Perimeter Venting" all around the edge of the Surface tablet.

That $278 million purchase of PA Semi followed by $121 million for Intrinsity, specifically for the development of the AX SoC line, look like brilliant moves in comparison. Especially since Apple appears to be on track to have a 64-bit A7 processor in two years. It's possible that the iPhone and iPad will have duo-core 64-bit A7 SoCs in 2014 and MacBook Air will have quad-core 64-bit A7 SoCs by around 2015. Macs of their own design, running an OS of their own design, on CPUs of their own design, is certainly Apple's "holy grail." That would keep their hardware costs down, allow them to undercut Intel-based PCs with $1000 Intel CPUs, and allow Apple to optimize their hardware and software for each other.

That's in the Motorola Razr i XT890, which costs $555 on Amazon. The older Motorola XT910 is about $355 with an ARM chip. The spec seems to be roughly the same besides the CPU but the XT910 is the older model so that has to be factored in. It's possible the Intel Atom is expensive but I imagine the price will vary based on who's selling it. Apple would sell over 100 million units, so they should get it cheaper than Motorola.

But even if it's $50 as opposed to $25, that's significant enough a cost to avoid using it if it doesn't offer a significant benefit. It could run the desktop OS when plugged into a dock and offer better performance than a G4 laptop but it would have to be a main feature to be worthwhile.

Would we want to see the same thing happen with the iPad/iPhone as the Ivy Bridge chips this year though and the Xeon chips? Delay after delay, fairly weak GPU again, processors running hotter than they should. I think they made the right decision with ARM - good job Fadell for sticking to it.

It's possible that the iPhone and iPad will have duo-core 64-bit A7 SoCs in 2014

Wow. Will we really need 64bit on a smartphone? I wonder what that feature will be useful for.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigMac2

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilBoogie

According to the Otellini in Isaacsons' bio, it was partially about the high price which let Apple to not use an Intel processor in the iPad:

I also have read this quote from SJ bio, but I find difficult to believe it was a cost issue that prevent to use an Intel processor within the iPad.

I agree, some stories in that bio are hard to believe. Did like the fact that Steve met his dad at his restaurant without either one of them knowing the family tie. Yep, even the non tech stuff was good; think I'll re-read it next year.

The reason to go 64 bit as I understand is not because we really need it on the iPhone or iPad.. it is because apple wants to get rid of intel processors that are found on mac computers in favor of arm... that's were you'll want 64 bit arm cpu's, and if they develop 64 bit arm for that reason why not putting those inside the iPhone and iPad.

Intel said Monday that president and CEO, Paul Otellini, has elected to retire as an officer and director of the company effective next May.
Otellini?s retirement caps a career of nearly 40 years of continuous service to Intel and its stockholders.

Hmm... 40 years... wouldn't that have placed him on the watch when Intel made this little "touch-sensitive" mistake and go into competition with their OEMs???

It's taken Intel a while to catch up with Paul Otellin, but then they've always been slow at everything.

"That (the) world is moving so quickly that iOS is already amongst the older mobile operating systems in active development today." — The Verge

Intel has already got x86 chips in phones:http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/ces/2012/pdfs/AtomprocessorZ2460.pdf
That's in the Motorola Razr i XT890, which costs $555 on Amazon. The older Motorola XT910 is about $355 with an ARM chip. The spec seems to be roughly the same besides the CPU but the XT910 is the older model so that has to be factored in. It's possible the Intel Atom is expensive but I imagine the price will vary based on who's selling it. Apple would sell over 100 million units, so they should get it cheaper than Motorola.
But even if it's $50 as opposed to $25, that's significant enough a cost to avoid using it if it doesn't offer a significant benefit. It could run the desktop OS when plugged into a dock and offer better performance than a G4 laptop but it would have to be a main feature to be worthwhile.
Would we want to see the same thing happen with the iPad/iPhone as the Ivy Bridge chips this year though and the Xeon chips? Delay after delay, fairly weak GPU again, processors running hotter than they should. I think they made the right decision with ARM - good job Fadell for sticking to it.

Of course that doesn't stop Intel from trying, but even their most power savvy CPU (Intel Atom Z2460) still have a TDP 4x times higher than apple Ax chips with much weaker GPU.

BTW Apple got a very long history of using ARMs cpu in their product, starting with the Newton.

That would be a new RISC instruction set, instead of the x86 translation to RISC currently used.

Intel tried to introduce a new instruction set for 64bit processors (Itanium) a few years ago, but that didn't go well.

I highly doubt they will try that again.

x86 translation to RISC will always use more transistors - and dissipate more - than a pure RISC instruction set (without translation) like ARM.

J.

Beside the x86 "emulator" there is to much legacy in the Pentium to be efficient for mobile space, any trick Intel would pull of to reduce the Pentium power consumption, you can apply the same trick on ARM.

Beside the x86 "emulator" there is to much legacy in the Pentium to be efficient for mobile space, any trick Intel would pull of to reduce the Pentium power consumption, you can apply the same trick on ARM.

Well, this is classic "not invented here" from Intel. The only way to go mobile and tablet Intels is to totally ditch x86 ~ it's not needed, because the only game in town 2013-2015 is Android and iOS. But you have to ask what has Intel been up to for the past 10 years.

Otellini, you did a great job but for mobile and tablet, it seems like the boat is being missed. Nonetheless, all the best. Thanks to Intel (and Apple of course) I can now, in 2012 get a pro-grade Mac in the form of a MacBook Air 13" entry level for 1/3 the price I would normally pay compared to 10 years ago.